Agricultural operations often require long, tedious hours driving over fields with agricultural machines pulling or carrying work implements, taking care to cover all desired areas efficiently, yet taking special care not to damage the crop.
With the advent of modern technologies, such as GPS positioning systems and modern control systems, advances are being made toward the autoguidance of the agricultural machines, thus helping relieve human operators from the work and fatigue of a long day in the fields.
However, many agricultural operations use multiple machines in the fields to get the work done. Even with autoguidance systems, the multiple machines must communicate and coordinate with each other to avoid conflicts, overlap, and wasted time and effort. Furthermore, the preliminary tasks of a typical autoguidance system, e.g., path planning and route determination, would be more efficiently performed if accomplished by one machine and communicated and coordinated with the remaining machines.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.